While researching pretzels for my newest book, Brother Giovanni's Little Reward: How the Pretzel Was Born, one of my favorite activities was trying lots of recipes to find the best homemade soft pretzel recipe for kids. With the help of my grandsons, we'd taste test each batch and figure out which tweaks produced the best and tastiest soft pretzels. The final version appears at the back of Brother Gio.

Ahna and Katherine, who work for @ebyrbooks and like to read #kidlit & drink coffee, usually at the same time (according to Twitter) made a really cute video where they made the pretzel recipe! I was really happy that they found it a simple recipe to make and had fun "mixing, mixing, slapping, slapping" the dough.

Final verdict for the pretzels? "They are done and they aredelicious!"

A few other fun facts I learned from their video:

1. Do you know why people say "when it rains it pours"? It's because Morton's salt (which they used in their pretzels) had a special additive that prevented the salt from clumping, so it actually didn't clump, but poured out even when it was raining :)